


Fair Weather Friend

by rexluscus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-05
Updated: 2011-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-21 01:35:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rexluscus/pseuds/rexluscus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Igor Karkaroff was Snape's first teacher in the arts of realpolitik, not to mention his first real lover. Twenty years later, the tables are somewhat turned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fair Weather Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Snape is young-ish at the beginning of this story, but not underage. Many thanks to Ebonlock and Schemingreader for beta-reading.

While he was still in school, Severus Snape had once overheard a girl in his year complaining that a particular boy only wanted her for her body and not for her mind. This was a sentiment for which he had a profound lack of sympathy. Snape was, in fact,  _desperate_  for someone to want him for his body, instead of just for his mind—that whirring, clicking abstraction of figures and functions to be put to one use or another. As proud as he was of his admittedly impressive mind, he knew it was just a commodity. The body was real, because it was worthless except that it was his own. What he wanted, deep down in that rarely-accessed part of himself that still dared to hope for better things, was to be wanted in all of his weakness and worthlessness.

Certainly, a lot of people wanted things  _from_  Snape. His mother wanted him to become the first Minister for Magic her family had produced. His father wanted him to disappear. Headmaster Dumbledore wanted him to "take a long, hard look at the direction your life is going in, my boy." Lord Voldemort wanted him to create new and interesting ways of killing people. Rabastan Lestrange wanted his five galleons back.

All Igor Karkaroff wanted from him was sex. And for a young man weighed down by so many demands, with so many people looking to put his much-vaunted intelligence to work for them, there was something refreshing about this.

That Karkaroff was a good deal older than he was and probably taking advantage of his inexperience didn't bother Snape one bit. After a couple of years as one among Lucius Malfoy's many glorified masturbation aids, he was only too happy to be exploited by someone who actually enjoyed seeing him naked.

Karkaroff didn't make him feel like the ugly piece of miscegenated filth he always felt like next to Lucius, who would let Snape suck his cock but wouldn't even touch his head to get a better angle. Karkaroff had a long black beard like Rasputin's and piercing, ice-chip eyes, and he seemed as though he had more important things to worry about than whether Snape had a bit of Muggle blood flowing in his veins. For Lucius, sex was all about status—the politics of who was sleeping with whom. Where Karkaroff was from, sex was about warmth. It was about bodies fitting together in a pattern of simple humanity, in defiance of a hostile, frozen environment that did its best to destroy anything human. Sex as rebellion against nature—this was a point of view Snape could get behind.

"It's a shame your family did not send you to Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts." Karkaroff's accent was thick and guttural and, Snape thought, so much more vital than Lucius's effete, nasal drone. He pronounced the 'H' in 'Hogwarts' as though he were clearing his throat—which fairly well summed up Snape's opinion of the place, too. They were lying crosswise on Karkaroff's vast, Viking funeral ship of a bed; a fire consuming several whole trees in a fireplace that took up an entire wall was warming them; their naked skin was tickled by thick furs that came from some unidentified Arctic animal that probably couldn't be seen in the Edinburgh Zoo. Karkaroff rested his glass of Spanish port on Snape's backside as Snape leafed idly through a large, leather-bound book.

" _This_  is the textbook you use? For the  _first-years?_ " Snape turned another page, frowning. "They don't even keep stuff like this in the Restricted Section at Hogwarts. I'd have been expelled just for  _having_  this."

Karkaroff chuckled and ran a square, callused finger over the smooth curve of Snape's arse, then lifted the port to his lips. "How you must have hungered for these things at Hogwarts," he said. "Sitting down to a banquet of learning only to rise more starved than before. Perhaps then you didn't even realise what you were missing."

Only people from frozen Northern countries where the sun didn't rise for half the year and fur was a standard wardrobe element could say something like 'sitting down to a banquet of learning' without laughing. "Oh, I realised it all right," he said with a soft snort. "They just made you feel so damn guilty about  _wanting_  it. Dark Arts...bah. Dumbledore just doesn't like anything he can't control." Snape turned another page. "Least if I'd gone to Durmstrang, maybe I wouldn't have felt like such a bloody freak of nature for wanting to  _know_  about these things."

"Yes," Karkaroff mused, drawing lazy patterns with his finger on Snape's skin, "you'd have been among like-minded people here, people who'd have understood you, people who'd have desired your...company."

"What, like you?" Snape looked back over his shoulder with a smirk. "All you desire is my ar— hey!" Karkaroff had flipped him over suddenly, pinning him with a heavy, furry body.

"Perhaps it is best you did not attend Durmstrang after all," Karkaroff said, threading the fingers of one hand into Snape's lank black hair. He put the glass against Snape's lips and tipped the port into his mouth. It tasted sweet and cloying, like a cough-suppressing potion. "I've had more than my fill of working around the rules against fraternising with students."

Snape thought about the other young men who had probably lain exactly where he was lying now, boys younger than himself, spreading their smooth legs for their esteemed and august professor. He spared a mental scoff for the thought of any Hogwarts professor indulging in something so morally ambiguous. They were all far too thin-blooded and middle-class—too depressingly  _English—_ for such things. Who might do it? Slughorn? The man refused to do anything that could upset his digestion. Dumbledore? What a laugh. Now, Karkaroff—you could say what you would about his character, but at least he had some genuine  _appetites_.

"Oh, yes, what a breach of trust this would be if I were your student..." Snape murmured as Karkaroff began to nibble on his neck. "You'd be taking near criminal advantage of me..." Karkaroff made a frantic little noise against Snape's throat and pinned him harder, coarse hair and hot, silky flesh grinding against Snape's thigh.

Once again, Snape marvelled at the ease—it was like hexing fish in a barrel to produce this reaction in the old man. (He thought Karkaroff was around forty, but at this point in his life, he still considered that 'old.') He'd never had the power to make any adult in his life do something—never. "Honestly," he whispered, smiling a bit as a hard cock nudged between his thighs, "if anyone ever found out you'd—ah!—taken my...virginity..."

Karkaroff's snarl was eager and bestial as he tossed the glass of port away with a startling crash and savaged Snape's neck with his teeth. 

"It does seem a bit hypocritical that you can teach your students the Dark Arts, but not fuck them," Snape went on, fending off his growling, nipping lover just a bit. He subtly emphasized the word 'fuck', knowing what that word in his mouth usually did to the man. Oh, but Karkaroff did enjoy nothing more than the sound of shameless filth pouring from the tongue of a tender young boy. "Besides, Igor," Snape's smile turned sly, "it's only a problem if you get caught." He liked calling Karkaroff 'Igor'—to be so familiar with a teacher (even if it wasn't  _his_  teacher) and not be reprimanded—it was thrilling, like revenge.

Karkaroff's smile made Snape think of Cossacks about to pillage an unsuspecting town. "Such a devious mind for one so young," he growled.

Snape bristled. "I'm not a child, you know," he grumbled. "I may look like a sixth-year, but I'm old enough and clever enough to serve the Dark Lord, aren't I?"

Karkaroff laughed. "Yes! Quite the little Death Eater you are! The Dark Lord will be sharing his closest secrets with you within the year, I'm sure!"

Snape felt a chill settle in his gut. There were a few things that could turn his mind instantly to thoughts of maiming and murder, and being mocked was one of them. "You're not very funny, Igor," he said tightly through clenched teeth.

Karkaroff's laughter vanished. "Your youth is your most attractive attribute," he said solemnly, placing a kiss in the hollow of Snape's throat. "Don't be so eager to be rid of it. I've lived long enough to know it's not wise to take a full-grown viper into one's bed. You should be glad we are not equals in the Dark Lord's ranks—otherwise, politics might come between us. Young men who think of nothing but power are so tiresome, anyway. I much prefer one who looks up to his elders instead of constantly seeking to surpass them."

"Well…" Snape floundered, wondering how much good it would do him to speak his mind. "I don't… _not_ think about power, you know," he finished lamely.

"Of course not." Karkaroff stroked his cheek. "And I am happy to teach you what I know about it. My first lesson is this—he raised a finger to trace the deep lines of consternation furrowing Snape's brow—"learn to hide what you are feeling."

Snape's frown deepened. "You mean—right now? But it's just you and me here; who am I hiding them from?"

"Severus, my child..." Karkaroff propped himself up on his elbows and gazed down at Snape with a chastising look. "Tell me: do you trust me?"

"Should—shouldn't I?"

"No!" Karkaroff's eyes blazed. "If I am able to teach you only one thing, let it be this: displaying your true feelings to someone—even me—is a very dangerous thing. This—he gestured to their intertwined bodies—"may seem very intimate to you, very safe, but you must learn not to let your guard down even in these pleasant circumstances. Trust no one, Severus, not even your lovers— _especially_  not your lovers, actually."

Snape glared at him sullenly. Karkaroff was beginning to sound like Lucius, with all his talk of bedroom politics; that sort of nonsense was exactly what Snape was here to avoid. Couldn't they just  _fuck?_  Why did everything have to be a game of cloak and dagger? "I thought you said you didn't want a schemer in your bed," he said, hating the slight note of whiny petulance in his voice.

"This is mere self-preservation," Karkaroff laughed. "I would be remiss in my duties as an educator if I did not pass on to you a few basic tools for survival. The other Death Eaters, Severus—you cannot count on them to have the tender feelings for you that I do. And one day, you may not even be able to count on me."

Snape laughed, a bit too high. "What, are you planning on betraying me sometime soon? Should I be worried?"

"My loyalty is to the Dark Lord, and to myself—you, my dear, are a distant third. So never assume that I wouldn't. And once we are no longer lovers, you will regret the things you revealed to me in your naïvely misplaced trust, I promise you."

Snape couldn't help saying it. " _When_ …we are no longer lovers?"

Karkaroff laughed merrily. "My dear, do you really expect this—this affair—to last forever?" he chuckled. He sat up, putting some space between them. "Are you labouring under the belief that we shall spend the rest of our lives together?"

Snape flushed hot with embarrassed anger. He in fact  _didn't_  want to spend the rest of his life with Igor Karkaroff, not even a little bit—but having the fact put to him so baldly, being told plainly that a day would come when Karkaroff would no longer want him—it felt as though that future had already come, that he was being rejected already in advance. A wave of shame at his own stupidity, his thoughtless overconfidence born of the thrill of having finally found somebody who actually  _wanted_  him, nearly made him choke. He hated feeling stupid, even more than he hated feeling ugly. The latter feeling was one he'd grown accustomed to, but his intelligence was not supposed to fail him. When it did, he felt like he was floating above the void, unsupported and alone.

He'd been stupid to think the sun of Karkaroff's desire would shine on him indefinitely, that just because they were lovers they might somehow also be  _friends—_ in short, that sex meant anything at all, other than a few moments of surpassing pleasure followed by a bit of extra warmth in one's bed. That was nothing to turn one's nose up at, after all. He could settle for that.

"Of course I don't think that," Snape scoffed, his tone breezy as his insides froze and hardened.

Karkaroff gave his cheek a fond pat. "Good boy," he said, and kissed him once firmly, then again softly, and then a third time with deep, slow heat. "I can teach you many things, you know. About the Dark Arts...about protecting yourself...about power."

Snape began to relax again under the pleasure of being touched, holding back a purr as Karkaroff nibbled some more at his neck. "Aren't you...ah...aren't you afraid the student migh—oh"—a big, rough hand closed around his prick—"outdo the teacher?"

The hand on his prick stilled, and hard eyes pinned him to the bed. "I assure you, Severus Snape, I feel quite secure," he said in a tight voice. Then his face softened minutely. "Besides, if you have designs to displace me, you have much to learn. Consider this lesson two: never announce your intentions to your enemy."

Snape gave him a cheeky smile. "I swear, Igor...you're completely incapable of recognising a joke."

"Oh, a joke, was it? Such a subtle child." Karkaroff returned to kissing his neck and pulling on his cock with long, possessive strokes. Snape sighed and closed his eyes, letting his churning mind be quieted by the bliss of having his body worshipped—even if it was at the hands of an old paedophile who had admitted he would stab Snape in the back if it suited him and toss him aside as soon as he was able to grow a full beard. He wondered for a moment if other people had lovers they could confide in, but for him the very idea was ridiculous. Nobody could see too much of what was inside him and still want to fuck him, after all. It was a fair trade-off.

* * *

Snape felt ridiculous. He was stretched out, naked as the day he was born, on the long table in Karkaroff's quarters between a half-eaten pheasant (with cranberry and turnip garnish) and a dish of hot apple kasha. A gravy tureen sat a little above his head and there was an abandoned plate of buttered rolls somewhere near his hip. Karkaroff had hastily pushed their plates and silverware to the side and was leaning over Snape's supine body, still wearing his fur-trimmed cloak, while he feasted leisurely on Snape's nipple as though it were being served for dessert.

The rough fur of Karkaroff's robes scraped deliciously against his erection, and his skin prickled in the chilly air. He liked having Karkaroff's big form bearing down on him like this—ordinarily he would hate the feeling of being exposed, being vulnerable, but Snape no longer experienced those feelings at Karkaroff's hands. He'd figured out the key to these little displays of butch aggression a while ago—they were simply the lady protesting far, far too much. Over the months, he'd picked up quite a bit from Karkaroff about the ins and outs of power, and one of the things he'd learned was that demonstrations of power always masked fear—and Karkaroff feared him, he knew the old man could bend him over as many tables and tie him to as many bedposts as he wanted, and Snape would  _still_  be the one holding all the cards.

It was freeing, in a way, to let Karkaroff think he was in control—to let himself be stripped naked and fucked while Karkaroff remained fully clothed, to be taken in all sorts of humiliating positions, to cater to each vulgar fantasy of domination. It was freeing, because he had been there earlier that week when the Dark Lord had threatened Karkaroff with severe punishment for botching an assignment—an assignment he had botched, Snape happened to know, because he'd had his cock buried in Snape's tender arse while he was supposed to be overseeing his mission's most sensitive stage.

The old man had been thinking with his prick more and more lately—and he seemed to know it. He knew it, and could do nothing to stop himself, and he was scared. After his speech to Snape several months ago about not trusting anyone, Snape felt he didn't have all that much sympathy for his erstwhile teacher. 

Karkaroff had handed him the weapon. It was only Snape's magnanimity—and perhaps some residual sentimentality as well as a healthy dose of lust—that prevented him from putting it in the old man's back.

And so he found himself laid out like another exotic dish on Karkaroff's board, arching in pleasure as the old man's hand, still greasy from the pheasant, fumbled between his legs and hastily began to open him up. Karkaroff's slick lips were leaving a trail of butter and grease as they travelled across his chest and down his belly into the dense hair below his navel. He gasped and spread his legs wide like the eager little whore Karkaroff wanted him to be, crying out as a mouth gobbled up his prick and a thick finger skewered him.

"The Dark Lord should see you now," Karkaroff murmured, licking his way up and down the length of Snape's cock. "What do you think he would think of you like this, on your back for one of his men, offering up your hungry little arse?" Snape's bollocks were devoured and released one by one, then his arsehole plundered by a greedy tongue. Karkaroff was making coarse, animal noises as he ate him, like a pig at a trough; it was disgusting but peculiarly arousing to be the focus of such voracious, out-of-control desire. He arched again and thrust his prick against Karkaroff's face, demanding attention.

Any demands Snape made lately tended to elicit explosive anger thinly disguised as lust; Karkaroff now seized Snape's slender thighs right at the hips and pulled, as though he were jointing the pheasant they'd eaten earlier. "You want me to hurry, do you?" the old man growled, biting hard on a nipple as he poised his thick cock at Snape's entrance. "Want me to use you roughly? Is that what you're asking for?" He shoved forward, the force of his cock burying itself all the way to the root sending a spasm of unfiltered sensation straight up Snape's spine. Several hard thrusts followed without a pause, and Snape's teeth chattered as his head knocked against the tureen. Through the slits of his eyelids, he could see the concentrated anger on Karkaroff's face as he focused on thrusting, in and out, in and out as though he believed he could reclaim a bit more of his lost authority with each stroke of his prick. Snape arched his neck and moaned enthusiastically, excited at least as much by the thrill of manipulation as he was by the jolts of pleasure delivered by each jarring thrust.

Once Karkaroff had finished above him, huffing and grunting into his sweaty neck, Snape closed Karkaroff's big rough fist around his cock and brought himself off explosively, splattering his come across the littered plates. Then he slipped between braced arms and headed for the bed, feeling Karkaroff's eyes on him as he went. "Do you think you get to sleep now?" Karkaroff muttered darkly as he stalked over, and Snape shook his head, silent and wide-eyed, sinking back onto the bed and letting his thighs part as Karkaroff loomed over him. "I'm not done with you, boy," the old man growled, stretching his body over Snape's and pressing him into the voluminous furs, and Snape heard the real hostility behind the pretended playfulness, the note in Karkaroff's mock-toughness that was deadly serious.

Snape allowed himself to feel a cold satisfaction. After all, Karkaroff was the one who had wanted to turn a relatively simple thing, just two bodies keeping each other warm, into something so complicated. He'd been the one to tell Snape not to think of him as an ally; now he could see what it felt like to be friendless and alone. He probably hadn't been expecting Snape to pick up his lessons so quickly—but Snape had lately been developing a taste for the savage joy of showing someone just how badly they'd underestimated him. There were advantages to being a young, quiet little nobody, he was finding, the chiefest being that nobody ever expected him to fight back. One should always exploit the advantages one has—that was another thing he'd learned from Karkaroff.

* * *

"I'm going to make a deal with them," Snape said as Karkaroff's dull eyes followed him from behind the bars. He noted with dismay how badly imprisonment had diminished Karkaroff, like a great bear grown listless and docile in a cage. Even his rich, commanding voice was now flat and scratchy.

"A deal?" Teeth gleamed suddenly in the low light. "If I find you have given them anything on me, I shall not hesitate to make sure you are torn limb from pretty limb…"

"You're so gothic sometimes, Igor," Snape sighed. This impotent anger was perhaps the most upsetting thing of all for him to witness. "No, I see no reason to do that."

"Do you know the name of the man who gave me up? Surely your deal-makers could tell you…"

"Why are you so focused on that?" His old frustration at Karkaroff's refusal to be subtle—his refusal to follow his own advice, really—rose up again. "You should be figuring out how to get out of here, not wallowing in revenge fantasies…"

"Yes…" Karkaroff's eyes took on a calculating glint. "You're right, my dear."

"Don't call me that," he said stiffly.

"Why not?" Karkaroff's smile widened, revealing more ugly teeth. "Are you worried your deal-makers might find out you've been in my bed?"

"I don't give a damn about that," he snapped. "I just don't like you taking liberties anymore." The truth was that he was horrified by anything that might bind him to someone behind bars, even something as ephemeral as the invisible cord made by words. He could feel its paralyzing tug on his will, drawing him toward the black nothingness of a living death. Prison would be worse than dying for him, he was sure of it.

They stared at one another silently for a few moments. Snape had a fair idea what Karkaroff was thinking, what he was working himself up to do. Finally, it happened.

"What would it take," the old man began carefully, "for you to put in—a good word—with those deal-makers of yours?"

And now Snape had a choice before him. Although he had lost most of his respect for Karkaroff by now, he could still remember the man as he'd once seen him—proud, wise, and passionate, holding onto life with the same jealous, joyous grip as that jewel of Russian wizardry, Rasputin—and a part of Snape wanted to pay tribute to that memory by averting his eyes from Karkaroff's humiliation and giving him the help he begged for. But then there was the part of him that knew Karkaroff himself was responsible for murdering the man Snape had thought he was, and held him accountable for it—the same man that had given Snape his first lessons in power and in true aloneness. It was this part of him that won out.

"I'll have enough work keeping myself out of trouble, I'm afraid," he replied blandly. "If you want out, you'll have to make your own deal."

The earnest pleading in Karkaroff's eyes vanished instantly. "I see," he said with cold finality. A pregnant beat passed, and then he said, "If you would refuse me that, then perhaps you would at least allow your old— _friend—_ a parting gift."

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic," Snape growled, "we both know I can't help you." It was true—helping Karkaroff would be suicide, or even worse, an invitation to share his intolerable fate of suspended animation. What Snape didn't say was that if things had been different between them, he might have considered risking it. He paused. "What do you want?"

"A kiss, to keep my memories warm."

Snape's lip curled involuntarily. "A kiss? You're so sentimental. Why?"

"Because I remember a time," Karkaroff said with a slight, sad smile, "when you were an innocent boy who looked up to me instead of a smug little schemer who takes pleasure in others' misfortune."

Snape wanted to laugh at the irony. So it was  _he_  who had fallen from grace in the world according to Karkaroff, eh? He tasted bitterness at the back of his throat. "So easy to assume the moral high ground from behind bars, isn't it?" he hissed. "You were a very thorough teacher, Igor; I honestly can't understand why you're surprised." 

Karkaroff simply stared out at him miserably, an unguarded despair in his eyes—of the sort he might have chastised Snape for, once upon a time. Snape stared back, refusing to be moved. Still, he knew there was no profit in refusing favours that were easily fulfilled, so he bent his head to the bars and let Karkaroff have his mouth one last time. Then he pulled back, wrinkling his nose at the sour taste. 

"Goodbye," he said, turning away. "I shall be praying for your speedy release."

* * *

Nearly twenty years later, Snape found himself once again considering both the balance of power and the power of memory. It was inevitable when faced with the uncertainty of seeing an old lover whom you'd last spoken to through prison bars. Falling back on the sort of strategising he'd learned at that very same lover's knee, he began tallying their respective assets. He certainly hadn't been beautiful when he'd been Karkaroff's lover, but young flesh was appealing all on its own, and his eighteen-year-old body had been his primary bargaining chip back then. In the absence of that, it would take other less tangible resources to maintain the superior position. He was confident that in these, too, he could retain the advantage. But the exact arrangement of the board remained to be seen.

He was a little irritated when Karkaroff made no effort to disguise his dismay at Snape's present appearance. It wasn't as though two decades had done much for Karkaroff's looks, either—he'd gone completely grey and he seemed to have shrunk, or perhaps it was that Snape had grown, or had simply stopped seeing him through the eyes of an overawed neophyte. There was thankfully no trace of the broken shade he'd seen in Azkaban, but neither was there anything of the man's original vitality. There was no longer any hint of Rasputin about him—he had the bearing of a bureaucrat now, a kind of fussy overrefinement that was the exact opposite of what Snape had first admired in him years ago. Any disappointment with respect to the kindness of the passing years was quite mutual, Snape was prepared to say.

Somewhat to his surprise, however, Karkaroff's looks of revulsion quickly turned speculative. As they sat together in the Great Hall or toured the grounds of the castle amid a term-time chaos somewhat altered in tone by the presence of two foreign schools, Snape could feel Karkaroff studying him, adjusting to the new paradigm. Such was the true power of memory. He seemed to be searching Snape's buttoned-down, well-covered body for some trace of the boy he remembered, and gradually, no doubt as rationalisations formed and standards relaxed, he seemed to find it.

This was why Snape was not at all caught off guard by the knock on his door, well past midnight four days after the Durmstrang delegation had arrived at Hogwarts. 

Snape was already in his dressing gown, and he belted it a little tighter before opening the door. Despite the increasingly warm glances Karkaroff had been giving him, he hadn't really considered whether, in the event that Karkaroff wanted to pick up where they'd left off, he would be inclined to accept. He still wasn't.

They were settled by the fire with cups of tea installed in their laps before Karkaroff spoke.

"Severus, before anything more is said, I want to address some nasty rumours you've no doubt heard about me..."

Ah, yes. He'd been expecting this. A nasty part of him wriggled its fingers with glee.

"Er, what rumours would those be?" he asked, looking up blandly from his tea. 

Karkaroff's face hardened for a brief moment before melting into a mask of obsequiousness. "Clever boy," he muttered with fake admiration. "The rumours, of course, that I accused you before the Wizengamot all those years ago."

"That you  _what?_ " Snape was finding it increasingly difficult not to laugh as he schooled his expression into one of indignant outrage. "Igor, I know those were troubled times, but I always thought we were _friends_ …"

"Enough of this!" Karkaroff barked. "Friends indeed! Stop pretending you knew nothing about this, because I know you did!"

"I'm always the last to know anything," Snape said with a put-upon sigh. "It's the curse of being stuck in this godforsaken place with no one but schoolchildren for company…and unlike you, I don't find the company of schoolchildren especially warming."

Karkaroff ignored the barb. "You have your  _friend_ , Albus Dumbledore," he muttered.

"If you think that Albus Dumbledore and I take long, secret-trading teas together, you're quite mistaken. I was a foot soldier for him; he told me nothing. I hope that's not why you're here," he added, gesturing between them.

"Of course not." Now Karkaroff was the one struggling to put on a face. "I am here…to beg for your forgiveness, Severus." The word 'forgiveness' sounded as though it had caused Karkaroff physical pain to emerge from his throat.

"Hmmm." Snape sat back and steepled his fingers under his chin. "Hmmm…"

"Oh, blast it all! If you're going to refuse, go on and refuse! I am capable of living without your blasted forgiveness!"

"Then you may have to," Snape replied calmly. This was revenge—quite a suitable revenge for Karkaroff's parody of piousness at their last meeting, his execrable attempt to make  _Snape_  feel guilt over what had happened. "You're not doing a very good job of convincing me of your sincerity." 

Fear flickered in Karkaroff's eyes. "I am sorry, Severus, I didn't mean that. You know I didn't…I'm just a bit overwrought, is all…"

He felt the ice in his gut at the memory of their final chat through the bars melt just a bit. "Hm. Well. Maybe you're sincere, maybe you aren't. Either way, you're going to have to work for it if you want my forgiveness. What do you have to offer me to show me how very sorry you are?"

"Offer you?"

"Yes, offer me. A token of your sincerity…otherwise, how am I to believe it?"

"Er, yes. You see, I have so little that you'd want, I'm afraid. Except, perhaps…" He trailed off, running his eyes suggestively up and down Snape's body.

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Except what, Igor?"

Karkaroff gritted his teeth. "Except myself. If you'll have me."

Snape laughed—which even he admitted to himself was rather on the cruel side. "That's your great, magnanimous gift, Igor? My, my, your largesse knows no bounds! Your _self?_  Something I've already had, and discovered I could quite easily live without?"

Karkaroff's jaw was trembling. "It's all I have to offer." His voice sounded strangled. "You did find it pleasing once, if you'll recall."

"That, I hasten to remind you, was a number of years ago, when you were far fitter and I had far less basis for comparison."

Karkaroff breathed a weary, angry sigh. "Ask whatever you like of me. Whatever you want, it is yours."

A thin smile snaked its way across Snape's lips. "I thought you knew better than to promise something without knowing what it is you're promising."

"I agree—most foolish! Are you now convinced of my sincerity, you pitiless boy?"

Snape dropped his hands and picked up his teacup. He had suddenly lost the desire to watch Karkaroff humiliate himself. The man had rolled over and shown his belly; he'd admitted that Snape was the stronger of them; what more did he want from the sad old bastard? Snape sighed. Maybe that was Karkaroff's true genius—the ability to inspire pity despite an obvious lack of deserving it.

"Then I accept," Snape said. "I'll collect my debt later, I think. Do not let it worry you further."

The look of abject gratitude on Karkaroff's face nearly made Snape ill. 

"Dear Severus...I knew you would understand."

Snape allowed himself a small, condescending smile even as his heart shrivelled in his chest.

"So..." Karkaroff began casting around, "you're looking well!"

He snorted. "You have what you wanted," he said sourly, "no need to keep flattering me."

Karkaroff's face fell a bit. "No, I suppose not. Still..." His eyes had a wide, unappealingly eager look as they roamed Snape up and down. Snape wondered if it were possible to cover himself with any more clothing than he was already wearing.

"Severus, do tell me how you've been passing the time these few years..."

The conversation after that was vapid and civil. Tea was drunk, yawns were displayed dramatically and the time was noted, and eventually Snape was shooing Karkaroff out the door with open relief. Lying in bed a short time later, he allowed himself to think about how pathetic and small Karkaroff had become. The memory of twenty years ago was just as potent to him as it clearly was to Karkaroff, but unlike him, Snape felt no need to superimpose it over the present. All he felt was a vague sadness that his first true teacher had turned out to be as weak as the rest of the sentimental fools responsible for his education.

* * *

Four months later, Karkaroff was back in his rooms, pacing in front of the fire, eyes blank and staring as they roamed the floor in front of his feet. "I don't understand...how could he be back?"

"He was clearly never gone," said Snape in a bored voice. "Just...weakened, somehow. Starting to rethink your little turn in front of the Wizengamot, are you?"

Karkaroff turned to him with a look of cold fury. "You're one to talk! How will you explain betraying him to Dumbledore, I wonder?"

"I have been a sleeper agent for the last thirteen years, safely stowed in Dumbledore's bosom and privy to all his secrets. The Dark Lord will be pleased with me, I daresay."

Karkaroff stared. "Have you...really...?"

Snape laughed. "Surely you don't think I'm going to reveal my secrets to you, of all people? You're the one who first taught me that lesson, if I recall correctly. No...I'm afraid my true allegiance shall remain a mystery to you. As it must."

"Yes, yes..." Karkaroff nodded distractedly, turning his eyes back to the floor. "You certainly were a quick study at that particular lesson..."

"You were such a natural teacher," Snape replied, eyes narrowing.

"Yes." Karkaroff brightened falsely. "But that is all in the past. I'd so hoped we could renew our acquaintance, start with a clean slate, as it were…"

Snape frowned at the sudden change of subject. "There's no such thing as a clean slate," he said warily, knowing Karkaroff agreed with him and wondering what embarrassing new favour he would be asked now.

Karkaroff suddenly fell to his knees in front of Snape's chair and grabbed his thighs, grey eyes holding his gaze with uncomfortable intensity. "Severus..." he crooned with shocking obsequiousness, "perhaps we could try…"

Snape stared, hating the pathetic sight. "Igor..."

The big, gnarled hands slid up his thighs until they were framing his crotch. "Let me do this for you, Severus, please. Come, now, surely you remember those days fondly..."

"The operative word is 'remember,' Igor." He tried to cross his legs. "Weren't you the one just talking about forgetting the past? Why would you possibly...?"

"I still want you, boy. Merlin help me, but I do." Karkaroff sounded angry with himself, desperate, and a bit hopeful.

Suddenly it was all perfectly clear. Of course—Karkaroff needed an ally. The Dark Lord was back, and life was about to get very hectic—for both of them, but especially for Karkaroff. The rest of their old comrades would be out for his blood, no doubt, so he was turning to the one person who might still retain some sentimental attachment to him, who might be persuaded to let his loyalty to the Dark Lord go a bit slack long enough to do an old mate a good turn.

He looked at Karkaroff between his knees and felt a shiver of disgust. He couldn't allow this, not if he had a shred of fondness or respect left for the old man. It would be misleading, anyway, because he had absolutely no intention of sticking his neck out for his former lover, no matter how warm his memories might be. If it was convenient, he might do what he could, but nothing out of his way.

He sighed. "You're making a fool of yourself. Get up."

Karkaroff's hesitant hope turned to fury. "How can you refuse me? I offer you this, and I daresay you've nothing else, and Merlin knows you're not eighteen anymore, so you ought to be..."

"Grateful, Igor?" Snape's lips twisted in a cold sneer. "Grateful that you'd be willing to suck my cock even though my body has grown hideous with age? Thank you, but I think I'll pass on your most generous offer."

"I wasn't going to say that," Karkaroff said quietly. "Don't you remember what it used to be like? Wouldn't you like to...to remember for a bit...?"

Really, there was no good reason to deny him this—if Karkaroff wanted to throw away his dignity, that was his business, and it had been a very long time for Snape, long enough that even offers from ex-lovers twenty years gone held a mild appeal. He groaned. "Fine, all right," he said, getting to his feet. "But not like that, not on your knees like we're in an alley. If you want it, you'll have to accept the whole thing." He began to unbutton his robes.

The promise of seeing Snape's unattractive, nearly-forty-year-old body didn't dissuade Karkaroff as Snape had hoped it might. Instead, he watched with a look of barely contained hunger as Snape rid himself of his robes and stepped, quite bare-arsed, into the firelight. He bent and removed his boots last, kicked his clothes into a corner, and met Karkaroff's eyes defiantly.

"Well?"

He knew what kind of figure he cut. He'd been in front of a bathroom mirror before and knew exactly what Karkaroff was seeing: a narrow, bony chest, sharp, protruding hipbones and shoulders, knobbly knees and queasily translucent, fish-pale skin scattered with uneven patches of hair. He fancied his cock hadn't changed much, but gone was the eighteen-year-old flesh that, while never muscular and toned, had at least been smooth and supple. He'd gone from slender and lithe to skinny and bony, from a creamy white to a sickly sallow. Yet Karkaroff was looking at him like a starving man at a saint's day feast.

He couldn't pretend that his insides weren't a little warmed by the feel of the old man's reverent hands touching his protruding ribs and stringy arms and skinny arse like they were the angles and planes of a teenage Olympian. The rough beard scratched like it always had on Snape's neck, and without really meaning to, he let his head tip back as Karkaroff placed a few clumsy kisses along the underside of his jaw. Then the old man sucked and snuffled and licked his way from Snape's throat down his bony sternum, along the scraggly black trail running down his hollow belly and to his pubic bone. His cock was only half-hard but Karkaroff got it into his mouth quickly, as though he were expecting Snape to change his mind, and gave it a long, hard, graceless suck that sent a sharp and not entirely pleasant jolt through his innards.

"For God's sake, Igor...a bit more gently, would you?" he mumbled, closing his eyes and leaning his arm on the mantel, a pre-emptive measure for when his knees decided stop working. Karkaroff's mouth stayed its ravenous assault a bit and the pressure became softer, sweeter. He leaned his forehead on his arm and sighed.

Coarse hands slid around to his arse, cupping and kneading and stroking that one part of his anatomy (besides his unassailable cock) that, truth be told, had held up rather well over the years—it was a bit skinny, but still pert and nicely shaped. From the great handfuls of it Karkaroff was seizing, the man had apparently latched onto this particular relic of Snape's teenage body as well. A broad finger insinuated itself between his buttocks and stroked his arsehole as a tongue slithered up the underside of his prick; then the finger pressed behind his balls and he groaned in earnest. There was no point in resisting pleasure; the effect of this encounter would be the same whether he enjoyed it or not. So he may as well enjoy it.

Twenty minutes later, as Karkaroff's furry body pounded into his from behind, the carpet on his sitting room floor scouring his hands and knees, Snape reflected that there might be unforeseen benefits to this situation. A Karkaroff who trusted him, who considered their bridges mended, could be valuable. He grunted and thrust back, recalling some of the keen pleasure of being taken hard on a thick pile of furs, of big warm hands roaming everywhere as firelight bathed him, of being safe in a warm, rough embrace. Yes; as inconvenient situations went, this one was not entirely without merit. So why was the thought of it so very hollow?

* * *

Months later, a door opened a sliver, revealing the tip of a wand and terrified grey eyes. As soon as they registered Snape's identity, fear was replaced with relief and the wand came down. The door opened wider to reveal Karkaroff's startlingly stooped form.

"Heavens, Severus, you have no idea the fright you gave me. You don't know what it's like—to think every knock on the door is going to be the one you've been dreading...please, come in, I've just put some tea on..." He turned his back to Snape and motioned him inside.

Snape followed, numb with disbelief. There was no suspicion in Karkaroff's demeanour, not even a wariness held in reserve; it was clear he hadn't even considered that Snape might be here with less than salutary intentions. What kind of perversity had to exist in a man who could be so free with dispensing his cynical, paranoid wisdom and yet absolutely blind to the necessity of heeding it himself? When Snape had accepted his apology at Hogwarts, and they'd fucked on his sitting room floor with all the grunting animal abandon of their old couplings, had Karkaroff truly taken that as a pledge of Snape's fealty to him? Could the old man truly be that stupid? 

Snape followed Karkaroff into the small kitchen. The urge was overwhelming to scream at him, to shatter his idiotic illusions, perhaps give him a running start. He watched Karkaroff's large, callused hands as they busied themselves with tea things on the countertop, and remembered how they'd felt sliding between his heated skin and cool fur. How they'd been the only hands generous enough to touch his body for the sheer pleasure of it and not for some instrumental purpose. He remembered the feel of that thick beard against the skin of his thighs as those hands had worked him over—not a loving touch exactly, but a willing and eager touch that had said "yes" to his body with its myriad imperfections and had cared if he'd felt some pleasure in it as well.

 _That_  was how it had been at the beginning of things, Snape now remembered— _that_  was what had been destroyed later with all that talk of power. Once upon a time, Karkaroff had admired the part of Snape that everyone else reviled, for no other reason than that it was young, and warm, and willing. He would never have that again, not as long as he lived, and he and Karkaroff had both done their damnedest at the time to make sure of that.

It was better this way, he thought as he raised his wand silently, better that the old man never know what hit him. If it could be done without pain or the terror of anticipation, well—that would be his final gift to Igor Karkaroff, who had once been kind enough to treat him as nothing more than a human being.

" _Avada kedavra_ ," he said softly, and Karkaroff dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, striking the counter with a jarring thud and a clatter of upset tea things, then crumpling in a heap on the floor. Tea was sent fanning across the counter and off the edge, where it dripped down the cabinet doors. Snape stood and listened to the rhythmic dripping that was all that broke the ensuing silence. He could risk doing no honours to the body—it would have to lie here until it was found, uncovered as it had fallen, as the endless winter of the place gradually invaded the tiny shack and hastened the cooling of his blood. Not wanting to stare at this scene long enough to commit it to memory, Snape hurried back out the way he'd come, pausing just long enough to cast the Dark Mark over the shack before disappearing into the perpetual Arctic night.


End file.
